The ExpressVPN Future of Privacy Scholarship

Introduction

The ExpressVPN Future of Privacy Scholarship was created to raise awareness of internet
privacy and security.

The internet is transforming our education system. The technologies used by schools
across the world are not fully secure or private, and schools themselves have
implemented their own surveillance systems
to track what their students do online.

As internet-ready devices proliferate in classrooms worldwide, so do threats to the
privacy of the individuals who use them. Awareness of online security and an
understanding of fundamental privacy rights are more important than ever.

Technology companies can self-regulate to provide optimal privacy to internet users.
The free market will choose the winners to be those companies that best protect their
users, without the need for government interference. Do you agree or disagree?

Past winners

If you had the combined powers of all the world’s leaders, what would be your 10-year plan
to ensure the next generation has the right to privacy?

All of the world’s leaders from a total of 195 countries arrived today in London, England, to
sign what has now become known as the Carson treaty. For years countries have battled against
threats to cybersecurity. Government servers are regularly hacked by malicious individuals
seeking personal gain. Since the 1990s, humanity has been forced to wonder if their data was
being stored on a secure, encrypted server. Citizens from around the world have been calling
on their representatives for years, and today those calls are being answered. Every country
in the world has agreed to uphold and fund a 10-year plan for increased cybersecurity.

The plan involves using artificial intelligence (AI) that was first developed nearly a decade
ago. AI technology can attack data breaches and other cybersecurity threats at exponential
rates that can’t be matched by humans. Beginning next month, individuals, companies, and
governments will have their own cybersecurity assistant to protect them on all digital
platforms.

The project, nicknamed Carson, will receive cybersecurity knowledge from around the world and
will monitor and search for patterns of fraudulent behavior in programs. Carson will look for
data breaches and offer solutions to those it is unable to solve on its own. Carson is
currently being developed by the most prestigious engineers in the world. Carson will use an
extremely strong 256-bit AES encryption. Hungarian representative Pista Magner said that “we
will not take risks with Carson’s own security.” Developers applying to work on Carson will
also need to have substantial background checks. Eventually, however, Carson will learn to
protect itself.

The Carson will be free to download, as this momentous day celebrates the coming together as
a global and digital world. Both the rich and the poor deserve the data protection this
program will offer. More users will also result in a wider range of resources to search for
data breach trends, thus improving Carson’s overall function. With the acceptance of this
10-year plan, the entire Earth has come together to defeat a common enemy. By signing the
agreement to be a part of Project Carson, every country in the world has declared war on
cybersecurity threats.

She enters the Library of Congress, heart pounding, palms sweaty, carrying nothing with her but today’s paper and her life’s work pressed carefully between the pages of the classifieds. She passes an old man reading the same paper she has clutched in her hands, today’s date sprawled across the front page; March 18th, 2027. It’s a momentous day; she hopes someday history remembers it.

It has been eight years since the government gave itself full freedom to monitor the digital activities of every citizen, including everything from your exact GPS location, to where you bought your morning coffee. She can’t even check out a book here without it being tracked. So instead she had spent her days in the medical library with meticulous hand-written notes and every book she could find about cancer, each of them back on their shelves by nightfall. She had carried on this tedious work with the maddening knowledge that the information she sought was never more than a few clicks away.

Citizen’s data had been used, among other things, for voter redistricting, and their democratic republic had covertly transformed into a corrupt authoritarian entity. Anything that did not help the bottom line of the corporations that now held the government’s purse strings was prohibited. The simple, cost-effective cure she had discovered instead of lengthy, expensive treatments would find her in much the same predicament as Gallileo, Lavoisier, Oldenburg, and the countless others before her who had challenged the world in the name of science.

But unlike history, she is not a lone scholar, but part of a vast underground network of doctors, researchers and scientists, secretly spreading information. They have been careful to leave behind no digital foot prints, nothing but an obsolete physical paper trail no one would think to follow.

She turns down the 7th row and searches the 4th shelf, because just like any rebellion, they thrived on hope, and symbols held a certain power. She pulls down volume 17, coated in dust (it’s tax code and carries little threat of ever being read on purpose), opens to page 76 and leaves a dozen or so pages of hope to be spread to millions.

As she leaves, she passes the old man with the newspaper, and he does not make eye contact, but gives a nearly imperceptible nod of his head which she does not outwardly acknowledge.

2016 Scholarship Winner

Topic: We Own the Future

Picture yourself in 2050. How will the evolution of the Internet affect our social structure and/or the authority governments have over citizens?

As I step outside for the first time in days, my eyes struggle to adjust to the glare. Activated by the sunlight, the GPS in my contacts orients itself and points me in the direction of SeCUREity’s Madison headquarters. Thanks to the incessant growth of technology and the Internet, much of a middle-class urban resident’s daily life occurs online. It’s 2050 now, and I’m on my way to an in-person meeting that could shape the next few years of my life.

2045 was the year everything changed. For decades, scientists had been relentlessly working towards more interactive and collaborative technologies. Although they’d been struggling since the mid-2030s, June 13th, 2045 marked a breakthrough. A leading technology company, Eyeful, Inc., released their incredible “WorldView” Internet-enabled contact lenses. These were created to project the online world into the air before a user, enabling them to navigate through the resulting holograph using their hands. Unfortunately, for the contacts to work, users had to temporarily upload their minds’ content to the Internet, with the optic nerve as the lenses’ link to their brain. But because the technology had not advanced enough to support a complete upload, users would have to sync and take down their brain content every day. The necessity of this coming and going, along with the inadequacy of the existing security made established protection for the digital brains impossible, leaving them vulnerable to private agencies and individuals trying to reap information. Nevertheless, school and work could now be easily attended online and at home. With so much ease and relative convenience, contact usage quickly encompassed almost everyone’s lives.

But it didn’t take long for the government to realize that the contacts posed a huge security risk. Masquerading as a reasonable effort to safeguard citizens everywhere, the Digital Brain Activity Protection Act was passed on September 6th, 2045. Under this act, WorldView contact users would be required to install government-issued firewalls around their digital brains. Although these firewalls worked well to keep prying companies and criminals at bay, they were hiding something--a filter heavily censoring a variety of sites deemed “suspicious” by the government. This news emerged after 6 weeks of firewall use, and a public uproar ensued. Most people agreed that the firewalls themselves were reasonable, but undisclosed censorship was reprehensible. As a result, curious citizens were unable to do non-work-related research. Families were unable to connect with children on the other side of the world because the only permitted communication sites weren’t available in some other countries. But no matter how much picketing, protesting, and petitioning occurred, the government refused to back down.

The proceeding uproar has continued for almost 5 years, but an alternative has finally arisen. SeCUREity is a company dedicated to providing Internet privacy, safety, and freedom all in one package. Their protective Internet service acts as a flexible, filtering shield around a user’s brain as they navigate the web, keeping potentially harmful people and information out. Because it travels with the user, SeCUREity allows people to freely explore the Internet without concern for their privacy and safety. It’s easily added as an implant to the WorldView contacts, where it encrypts each piece of data from a user’s brain as it uploads to the Internet. With this technique, SeCUREity provides a convenient opportunity for the government to ease up on restrictions and resume protecting instead of controlling its people. That’s why I set out this morning on my way to obtain SeCUREity’s service with a hope that I, and surely many others, haven’t felt in a long while--that soon, I could be free.

Contest rules

Essays must be written in English.

Applicants must be currently enrolled in either a high school, undergraduate school,
or graduate school located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European
Union, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.

There is no age or citizenship requirement.

Essays must be sent via email only, to this address: scholarship@expressvpn.com.
To be valid, the application email must include the following information:

Your name

The name, address, and contact details of your school

Your current grade level

One entry per student. Multiple entries per student will be disregarded.

Essays must be submitted online by August 31, 2019, no later than 11:59 p.m.,
Pacific Standard Time.

The winner will be announced by the end of October 2019. The prize will
be awarded by international wire transfer.
The winner will be required to provide his/her bank information in order to complete
the bank transfer.

The winner must submit a valid ID and proof of enrollment in a high school,
undergraduate school, or graduate school located in the United States, Canada, the United
Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.

Employees of ExpressVPN and their immediate family members are not eligible for this
contest.

All entries become the property of ExpressVPN. The contest winner agrees to allow
ExpressVPN to publish or print his/her name and essay.

Winners will be solely responsible for any federal, state, or local taxes.

The prize is listed and paid in United States Dollars (USD).

The decision of ExpressVPN in respect of any dispute arising out of this program shall
be final.

About ExpressVPN

One of the world’s largest providers of VPN services, ExpressVPN enables users to
protect their privacy and security online with just a few clicks. The company’s
award-winning apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, routers, and browsers secure
user information and identities with best-in-class encryption and leak-proofing.

With 2,000+ servers across
94
countries, ExpressVPN provides a fast connection and uncensored access to sites and
services across the globe. The company is based in the British Virgin Islands and has
been operating since 2009.

A vocal advocate for internet freedom and privacy, ExpressVPN is a proud financial
supporter of non-profit organizations fighting to protect digital rights, including the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Defense League, OpenMedia, and others.